


[we're going home now]

by pennyofthewild



Category: Samurai Flamenco
Genre: AU, Experimental Style, Freeform, Gen, Non-graphic depiction of violence, Other, Post-War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennyofthewild/pseuds/pennyofthewild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(There must have been victories, Hidenori knows, but he can only recall the losses. If it had not been for Masayoshi, Hidenori is sure he would never have made it out alive.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	[we're going home now]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grovtsett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grovtsett/gifts).



> Dear Seabroth,
> 
> WWII from a Japanese perspective is something I'd never really thought about - and so I knew next to nothing about it. Unfortunately, in my quest to find out more, in order to write a more believable story, I got caught up in the details, and at the end of several extensive reading sessions, I knew a whole lot more about the political background and settings leading up to the war, some sketchy details about the war itself, and next to nothing that would help me actually write a story set in the midst of those events.
> 
> (Then came finals, and that is where everything spirals out of control.)
> 
> The end result is this: a thousand words of experimental prose that is, in essentials, a middle finger to English grammar, with no semblance of plot and barely anything warlike.
> 
> -I hope you find something to like in it nonetheless (if you are interested, I could write you something else, later, to make up for this?).
> 
> I hope you had a Merry Christmas: and Happy New Year!

It’s funny, Hidenori thinks, but the universe doesn’t give any kind of indication, when a someone who is going to be important, in some way, walks into a person’s life. There are no fireworks, or subtle beeps, or any voices that whisper, ‘ _watch out for this one; you’re going to love them,_ ’ or ‘ _that one will stab you in the back someday_ ’ or, ‘ _you’re going to be with this one forever’_ –

\- and so, consequentially, Hidenori cannot remember the exact moment Masayoshi stepped into his life. It may have been at the dinner party his father threw for his political friends, in the fall of 1930, when the war was still a distant maybe on the western horizon, or on their first day at the cadet’s academy, when their eyes might’ve met across the entrance hall at the opening ceremony, or at one of the countless drills trainees were subject to, in the days leading up to their deployment to Manchuria.

He can’t remember, either, the moment they became friends – was it over written assignments, completed at rickety wooden tables in the mess hall after hours? Was it on their first night, in the soldiers’ barracks, or the third, or a fortnight later?

Hidenori does remember the trek north to Nomonhan, the smell of blood and charred flesh and the ceaseless ring of aircraft motors and explosions. He remembers waking up in the makeshift sickbay to a sympathetic face topped with a shock of gold hair, a soothing voice and a brilliant smile, and wondering if he was delirious.

 He remembers the retreat to Yingkou – the bitterness of their fellow soldiers, the brutality, the hopelessness, a bleak contrast to the honor and glory promised by their superiors.

Soldiers are closer to machines than supporters of the war would have people believe. Hidenori knows this firsthand; has heard the screaming, and the pleading – has been a bystander, and an instigator, a follower of orders and an absolute coward.

(There must have been victories, Hidenori knows, but he can only recall the losses. If it had not been for Masayoshi, Hidenori is sure he would never have made it out alive.)

The quiet nights had been the worst. Quiet nights were the nights the men were free to do as they pleased. There were screams of a different sort on those nights, Hidenori remembers. He dreams of them – the screams, sometimes, so vividly he can feel the revulsion in the pit of his stomach, and a deeper-set feeling that sickens him even now, when he recalls it.

He had horrified Masayoshi, when he had first voiced it aloud – and immediately felt ashamed to have even thought it, in the aftermath of the disappointment that crossed Masayoshi’s face.

“I never would have expected it of you,” Masayoshi had said, quietly, almost gently – and this, Hidenori can picture with perfect clarity – the way he bit his lip and his eyes brightened with unshed tears, as if they weren’t in the middle of a war – as if Hidenori was, at his core, a better man than Masayoshi was, as if Hidenori, too, was an angel fallen into an abyss of sinners.

(That is why it was – and is – so difficult to hate Masayoshi, Hidenori thinks.)

“There’s something else, you can do,” Masayoshi had continued; Hidenori’s eyes had widened and he is pretty sure his mouth had fallen open, but Masayoshi had kept speaking as if he was proposing a horse ride along the river bank back in the Home Country, and Hidenori had listened.

(Now, Masayoshi will slide under the covers after Hidenori is already settled, feigning sleep. He will slip an arm around Hidenori’s waist, the weight comfortable, familiar, tuck his head under Hidenori’s chin. Hidenori will sigh, turn his face into Masayoshi’s hair. Masayoshi smells the way he’s always smelled – cool, and sweet, like a spring breeze, before it caresses skin and flits away.)

***                                                                                                    

Sometime during the twenty-odd years they have been acquainted, Hidenori learned that Masayoshi can play the piano. In hindsight, he ought not to have been surprised; there are very few things Masayoshi cannot do, but he remembers being almost irrationally angry, when he’d first found out, crouched behind a barricade, part of a long line of infantry soldiers crouched in a hastily dug ditch, poised on the brink of certain death.

“I wish I could have played for you,” Masayoshi had said, wistfully, and Hidenori had almost choked on his (bitter) laughter.

(He isn’t sure, now, why he’d been jealous at all. Masayoshi has always been like the sun: endlessly giving, expecting nothing in return.)

At the time, Masayoshi had smiled, a little. Reached out, clasped Hidenori by the arms. His face was pale against the deep colors of his uniform. His hair gleamed in the weak, early morning sunlight, bright against a backdrop of barren earth and smoke-filled air.

Hidenori doesn’t remember what Masayoshi said; just that it had been ridiculous and inane and left a warm sort of feeling in his stomach, despite the futility of the situation and the depth of that fleeting moment of anger – a feeling that lasted even after the charge was over, and the war was lost.

(He wakes up, now, to the sound of music – Chopin, Hidenori recognizes dimly, in the living room. Masayoshi is seated at the piano, shoulders hunched, head bowed. His hair, still mostly gold in the light of the table lamp, is littered with strands of gray, nestled within the brightness, each hair a testament to years of nightmares that will never fully go away.

Hidenori skims the line of Masayoshi’s back with his fingers, sitting down on the piano bench, setting his hand on Masayoshi’s knee.

Masayoshi drops his head onto Hidenori’s shoulder, giving Hidenori a tired smile and an upward glance from underneath his lashes.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Masayoshi’s voice is hushed, and Hidenori watches him finger the piano’s keys with the nimble dexterity of a lifetime of practice.

“Play something happier,” Hidenori tells him.)

***

 

 

 

 

 

_end._


End file.
